Ken Borland

Tournament ambassador Ernie Els is desperate for a local winner of the South African Open at Glendower Golf Club this year, but for next year’s event he has big plans to bring out Rory McIlroy and other top international golfers for the second oldest national open in the game, which starts on Thursday.

After three successive foreign winners of the South African Open – Andy Sullivan and Morten Orum Madsen at Glendower and Henrik Stenson at Serengeti, Els said on Tuesday that it was time for a team effort by the South Africans to ensure the prestigious trophy returns home.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on winning our national open, but for the last few years the foreigners have come and taken the trophy. I know it’s not a team competition, but I can guarantee you that the South African guys are going to pull together to try and take the trophy back because the foreigners are starting to take over. Branden Grace has not won it yet and I know he’s desperate to do it and I think George Coetzee is taking it very seriously this year as well. The local guys really want to win it,” Els said.

But from next year, Els himself will make it even harder for the home golfers as he plans to bring world number three and four-time major winner McIlroy over for the tournament.

“I’ve got Rory to commit to playing in the tournament, although I gave him some time to do it, a couple of years. For those top guys in the world, their schedule is so condensed, but I’m sure next year we’ll get him down here, maybe we’ll put him up in Cape Town for New Year’s.

“Rory has been such a great friend and supporter of our charities, as have other great players too. They’re all great lovers of South Africa, guys like Chubby Chandler and Lee Westwood are in Cape Town right now. I’m beginning to find my feet as the tournament ambassador and I want to make the field stronger. The top couple of golfers in the world have horribly busy schedules but I’m getting commitments from them,” Els said.

As for Ernie’s own game, the five-time winner of the SA Open had, by his own admission, an awful 2015, but he has spent many hours playing while also getting himself refreshed over the festive season.

“It was tough last year, as bad as it’s ever been, I missed some really short putts and I had tennis elbow. But I took time off, I feel refreshed and I feel up for it. I’d love to be in the top-50 again by the end of the year and I played a lot in December in Oubaai,” Els said.

Titans coach Rob Walter has followed the same route as several other franchise coaches and included some young new faces in his squad for the opening weekend of RamSlam T20 Challenge action, but he says this is purely incidental because he is looking to put his best possible team out on the park for their match against the Dolphins in Centurion on Sunday afternoon.

Off-spinner Ruben Claassen and seamers Sammy Mofokeng and Lungi Ngidi have been called up to the squad, which also includes returning internationals Quinton de Kock, Farhaan Behardien and Chris Morris.

“This is the best team we can choose at the moment and the guys coming in have certainly showed that they have something to offer. The fact that they are young is just incidental. It was very clear in the Momentum One-Day Cup that if we get our skills together in all three disciplines, like we did in the successive bonus-point wins, then it’s difficult to compete with us. But in the rest of the games, some of our skills were only at 30%,” Walter told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

De Kock and Behardien are in fine form right now and will certainly boost the Titans against a star-studded Dolphins team in which David Miller and Kevin Pietersen pose a clear and present danger.

“It’s great to have those guys back, especially after such a successful series. They’re individuals who have done well, they’re in good form and they’ll bring energy and experience to the team.

“We don’t have any special plans for KP … he hasn’t hit many balls in the last couple of months. But the Dolphins are a good all-round team, their batting is probably their strong suit, but Kyle Abbott and Craig Alexander have been bowling pretty well,” Walter added.

Squads

Titans: Henry Davids, Quinton de Kock, Grant Mokoena, Mangaliso Mosehle, Farhaan Behardien, Qaasim Adams, Albie Morkel, Chris Morris, Marchant de Lange, Tabraiz Shamsi, Junior Dala, Heino Kuhn, Ruben Claassen, Lungi Ngidi, Sammy Mofokeng.

Dolphins: Morne van Wyk (captain), Cameron Delport, Cody Chetty, Kevin Pietersen, David Miller, Khaya Zondo, Andile Phehlukwayo, Keshav Maharaj, Kyle Abbott, Ayavuya Myoli, Craig Alexander, Rabian Engelbrecht, Prenelan Subrayen.

Dale Steyn brings an almost religious fervour to the art of fast bowling and Allan Donald says it is this passion for taking wickets that separates Steyn from other great pacemen.

Steyn became the 13^th bowler to take 400 Test wickets in the second Test against Bangladesh in Dhaka this week, but his strike-rate of just 41.5 balls-per-wicket sets him apart from all the other cricketers to have achieved that milestone.

New Zealand great Sir Richard Hadlee is a distant second on 50.8, meaning Steyn is the most incisive bowler in Test history. Counting bowlers who took 300 Test wickets, Steyn still has the best strike-rate, followed by Waqar Younis (43.4), Malcolm Marshall (46.7), Donald himself (47.0) and Fred Trueman (49.4).

“Obviously Dale has immense skill to do that, but you can bring all the skill in the world to the table but if you don’t have passion you’re not going to have a record like his. The one thing that stands out for me, that separates Dale from the rest, is the deep competitive edge that only he has, which makes him into that incredible bowler. The number of times he has produced something special for South Africa because he’s so attack-minded,” Donald told The Citizen on Friday.

Donald, whose record certainly bears comparison to Steyn’s, is a firm believer that the 32-year-old is one of the all-time great bowlers.

“I get very passionate when I talk about the absolute greats – McGrath, Ambrose, Pollock – and they’ve all done amazingly well over a long period of time. You judge the greats on one thing and that’s consistency. Dale has got to 400 Test wickets so quickly because he’s so consistent, taking 80 Tests, that’s five wickets a game. His consistency is why his strike-rate is so low,” Donald said.

Remarkably, Steyn is as effective on the sub-continent as he is anywhere else, his haul of 80 wickets in 16 Tests (prior to the current game) perfectly matching his career-average of five per match. Only Hadlee and West Indian Andy Roberts have had better rates of success on the sub-continent.

“You only have to see how phenomenal Dale is in the sub-continent to understand his skill factor, especially reverse-swing. His pace through the air and ability to reverse the ball both ways are his greatest assets over there,” Donald said.

Steyn’s former bowling coach with the Proteas said he is not sure whether the man with the second-most Test wickets for South Africa behind Shaun Pollock (421) would consider slowing down and using skill more than pace as he gets older, as Hadlee did so successfully for New Zealand.

“I hope he’s got more diesel in the tank but he’s 32 and, after a massive milestone, it will be interesting to see how he’s handled over the next 12 months. He looks fresh and hungry at the moment, but I think he would hate bowling at 134km/h. He’ll have to decide that for himself, but there’s a huge series coming up in India and we need him bowling at his best in that,” Donald said.

GRAPHICS

Career records

       Tests  Inns   Balls    Runs   Wkts  Best    BM      Av      ER      SR      5i    10m
Steyn   80     149    16716   9040    402  7-51   11-60   22.48    3.24    41.5    25     5

Donald  72     129    15519   7344    330  8-71   12-139  22.25   2.83    47.0     20     3

Most Test wickets in Asia by bowlers from outside the subcontinent

*Stats courtesy CricInfo & sportskeeda.com

Sharks CEO John Smit is hoping to regularly hear the applause of 30 000 people at Kings Park this year as his team mount a strong SuperRugby challenge, but he’s hoping too that other South African franchises are also pushing hard for the title because that will be the greatest benefit to the Springboks’ World Cup campaign.

Smit told The Citizen that there are enormous benefits to be gained from SuperRugby for the Springboks, remembering how crucial the tournament was in 2007 when he led South Africa to the World Cup crown in Paris. Earlier that year, the Bulls and Sharks had competed in the SuperRugby final, with the Bulls snatching a dramatic Bryan Habana-inspired one-point victory.

“The big thing in 2007 was that the Bulls and Sharks had such successful campaigns and so we were very well prepared for the World Cup. If you’ve got a SuperRugby title-chase to focus on, then the World Cup doesn’t become a distraction and SuperRugby was the best platform and preparation for our win in France.

“I hope it’s the same case this year and we have two or three teams right up there because you’re playing against the guys you have to beat at the World Cup. The players should go out intending to win SuperRugby this year and your best-performing players should be the Springboks. That’s what happened in 2007, we had the guys to win the World Cup and they were confident and well-prepared from SuperRugby,” Smit said.

The former Springbok captain is also hoping that Sharks rugby emerges from an unhappy 2013 in which crowd numbers dropped dramatically at King’s Park in response to an unpopular non-possession based game plan employed by Jake White.

“We’re still 14% behind on our season ticket sales but I’d like to see more than 30 000 people at King’s Park on Saturday for our opening game against the Cheetahs. Time will tell, it’s a big challenge, but we’ve been working hard on our marketing, getting the fans closer to the players, having open days and more interaction, whereas they were removed before.

“We had a good squad last year and we could have won the competition, but the environment possibly wasn’t good enough. This year we have an even better squad and a better environment,” Smit said.

The “better environment” is mostly due to Smit letting go of White in what must have been a tough decision for South Africa’s longest-serving Test captain to make; fortunately he has found a top-class replacement in Gary Gold, a former Springbok assistant coach.

“It’s been a pretty seamless transition and Gary has put in place such instrumental plans. He, Brendan Venter and defence coach Michael Horak were all at London Irish together and Gary has fitted in as if he’s been here the whole time.

“So there’s nothing too new happening with the team, Gary understood the vision and his arrival has certainly been a positive,” Smit said.

In terms of the Sharks’ SuperRugby rivals, Smit expects a fierce derby against the Cheetahs this weekend, even though their small pool of players means they will find it hard to maintain a challenge throughout the competition, while the Stormers have a history of success behind them.

But Smit is most concerned by the Bulls, who he says have been able to gather a powerful squad together in Pretoria.

“The Bulls are going to pose a far bigger challenge this year. In the last two or three years, they’ve come a long way, quietly going about their business, and they’ve made some key signings, especially those three Free Staters who will have a massive impact in the pack.

“Pierre Spies is back off the bench and, in the meantime, Victor Matfield will captain the side. Not too many squads have that sort of depth of leadership,” Smit said.